Linearity of free resolutions of monomial ideals

We study monomial ideals with linear presentation or partially linear resolution. We give combinatorial characterizations of linear presentation for square-free ideals of degree 3, and for primary ideals whose resolutions are linear except for the last step (the "almost linear" case). We also give sharp bounds on Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity and numbers of generators in some cases. It is a basic observation that linearity properties are inherited by the restriction of an ideal to a subset of variables, and we study when the converse holds. We construct fractal examples of almost linear primary ideals with relatively few generators related to the Sierpinski triangle. Our results also lead to classes of highly connected simplicial complexes Delta that cannot be extended to the complete dim Delta-skeleton of the simplex on the same variables by shelling.